Duplicating metanarratives could involve more variation in the duplicates

This review is my opinion and contains spoilers.

“I told you I’m Shehyar and you hit me and he tells you he’s Sallu and you still hit him?”

“Wrong No.” is a 2015 Pakistani film directed by Yasir Nawaz and stars Javaid Sheikh, Danish Taimoor, Danish Nawaz, and Shafqat Cheema. The film is about Salman (Danish Taimoor), who switches places with the orphaned grandson of a wealthy businessman who happens to be his double. After falling in love with the businessman’s assistant, Salman learns to stop running away from his problems, and the grandson learns the value of family. The film’s storyline touches on every beat it’s expected to, with some missed opportunities in selling them.

The film dedicates a decent amount of time to hitting as a form of comic relief, just as much as it points out how mindless this can be. Humor is generally intended to be found in the exaggerated misunderstandings in scenes, and the plot does its best to set up the audience for another twist, only to help them get two steps ahead. Since the film presents itself in a structure of three-story timelines, all different sides of the metanarrative. It can sometimes be challenging to connect with each of them emotionally. Salman, the hero of the film, only gets an excellent third dedicated to his story, even though his action propels those in the world around him. Even though the audience doesn’t spend that much screen time with Salman, stories of the grandson living his life and the kidnappers scrambling for the object of generous bounty do need their own space to build out the narrative structure. However, the pay-offs don’t always land. The film perhaps gets caught up in its own nuances that it needs to pay dues to, forgetting that there is a structure of films where the plot is fueled by misunderstandings: a character makes a proposition, unfolds with unknown consequences, and those consequences unravel truths about human nature. Each of these beats is present in the storyline, but not all of them land in the proportions that an audience member is used to. Of course, the realizations in the film are not revolutionary, and the audience is well-prepared to see characters undergo moments of growth. This can be a powerful position to put an audience member in. If the screenplay and film let these moments land with better pacing, the audience would follow with the character’s emotions.

One reason these moments may be lost on the audience, even if the actors feel they have done their best to pace their characters’ journeys, is the proscenium nature of the film. Sometimes, the film doesn’t do justice to notable climaxes in the songs that it has. It knows to change angles and scenery with different verses, but it doesn’t seem sensitive to the emotions within the songs themselves, as they change cadence. The general purpose of the song is delivered without fail (to pursue, to fantasize, to appreciate), but the point could be made with a screenshot. It’s possible that audience members could be mesmerized by the actors’ skill in acting, dancing, and physicality. Of course, the actors carry the film through predictable beats and bits of literal beatings. One thing that may confuse an audience member is the unbalanced production set. Every set seems meticulously arranged, but it’s unclear that all the scenes belong to the same film with similar thematic purposes. It’s particularly Salman’s environment, which feels a little uneven. The colorful and imaginative set primes the audience to think that Salman will bring this color to other business areas, he assumes. Still, it remains restricted to his house, cementing an aesthetic divide between the two worlds. Perhaps this is intentional, as Salman doesn’t intend to carry the pride of his upbringing as he disguises himself. His morals are demonstrated, but his rejection of his past might be overtly easier to pursue through his clothes. This would hold, as Salman’s idea of businesswear is a bright yellow suit, but the change to assimilation happens all too quickly. Salman does indeed want to convince others that he is who he says he is, but in the same way that he chooses to be himself, he could have emulated this in his wardrobe shortly after he was convinced he made his way in. Clothes do not make a person, but in film, they’re a helpful indicator (because of their ability to portray color) to learn characters’ state of mind as they change over time.

You can watch “Wrong No.” on Prime.